Daniel Simpson The Evolution of Modern Yoga

About this episode

In this episode, we welcome back Daniel Simpson, who teaches yoga history and philosophy online and at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, to discuss his new book, The Evolution of Modern Yoga (Mandala Publishing, 2026). We begin with his paper at the Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana conference in Paris, and his case for holding popular books about yoga to the standards of historical evidence. Daniel reflects on his path from foreign correspondent to “yoga nerd correspondent,” and on how The Truth of Yoga, written as an FAQ for teacher trainees, led to a second book answering the question his students ask most often: how did we get from the yoga of the texts to the yoga of today? We also discuss how the book builds on Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body and Roots of Yoga, and why the word “origins” has caused so much trouble.

From there, we turn to B. K. S. Iyengar and Light on Yoga, and to the long history of presenting innovation as tradition, from the compilers of medieval haṭha texts to modern gurus. Daniel explains how he invites practitioners to work with these tensions rather than simply be told they are wrong: the forgotten centrality of mudrā in medieval haṭha, the goal of ending rebirth, and what may have been lost along the way. We explore the surprisingly recent history of sūryanamaskāra, from wrestlers’ training and the Rāja of Aundh’s 1928 manual to the International Day of Yoga, and ask why a largely male, ascetic tradition is now practiced mostly by women, with stops along the way for Gārgī and Sulabhā, harmonial gymnastics, and Mollie Bagot Stack’s Women’s League of Health and Beauty. We close with what surprised Daniel in writing the book, and how slowly new scholarship makes its way into print.